Sound artist Darren Ng
“Do what you can, what you love and what you believe in. Don’t do it otherwise.”– Darren Ng on receiving the Young Artist Award in 2012
Sound artist Darren Ng’s repertoire is hugely diverse. From solo piano pieces to experimental works which fuse sounds from wildly different sources, Darren’s unique compositions are always intriguing, sensitive and highly emotive.
In a prolific career spanning 16 years, Darren has sound-designed and composed music for over 150 productions including stage, dance, film, installations and exhibitions. Since 2004, he has been Associate Sound Artist and Music Composer for The Finger Players, and also works independently and as part of the light-sound-spatial design trio INDEX.
Darren is also an acoustic ambient music composer, recording music under the stage name “sonicbrat” with independent studio Kitchen. Label. He has released more than 10 albums and has performed in numerous prestigious international music and arts festivals across Europe and Asia such as Wiener Feswochen (Vienna, Austria) and SONAR (Barcelona, Spain), to name a few. He was also selected to participate in the Redbull Music Academy in 2008 and has been an alumni since.
Darren is a multiple winner and nominee of the Straits Times Life! Theatre Award for Best Sound, and also a recipient of the National Arts Council’s Young Artist Award for Music and Multidisciplinary Practice in 2012. He was also named JUICE Magazine’s Best Laptop Artist twice.
Bitesize interview with Centre 42 (20 July 2015)
Darren shares what sound means to him and the process of working on his latest work with the Centre The Vault: #3.2 For The Time Being.
Selected works
- View the trailer of The Book of Living and Dying (2013), produced by The Finger Players. Darren was sound designer and music composer for the production and played live for the performance. An extract of the theme song is featured in this trailer; you can listen to it in full here.
- “Örkin hans Nóa” (“Noah’s Ark”), another of Darren’s pieces for The Book Of Living and Dying.
- Piano theme sketch composed for Everything But The Brain (2013) by Sightlines Productions.
- Selections from Darren’s album Stranger to My Room (2013) as sonicbrat:
Caesura
Stranger To My Room
Temporal [Raw Piano Recording]Listen to more of Darren’s work via his SoundCloud page.
“I like listening to a space, as it defines and characterises our reality. There is a déjà vu quality to sounds as they weave in between the conscious and the subconscious. […] To me, sound is the materialization of negative space, which is the space we are listening to, divided as such.”
(Source: SOUND – Latitudes and Attitudes, Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, 2014)
A sample of recent projects
| 2015 | The Vault: #3.2 For the Time Being By Centre 42 |
| 2015 | The Struggle: Years Later By The Theatre Practice |
| 2015 | Off Centre By The Finger Players The published play is available for browsing in Book Den. |
| 2015 | Public Enemy By W!ld Rice |
| 2014 | Poems about Chaos – In collaboration with Bani Haykal By Esplanade Presents |
| 2014 | Tangible Oeuvre Tacet: Friction (Sound installation, Exhibition; part of Sound – Latitudes and Attitudes) By Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore |
| 2014 | Art By Nine Years Theatre |
| 2013 | Twelve Angry Men By Nine Years Theatre |
| 2013 | Both Sides, Now – Entrances & Exits (Sound Installation, Exhibition) By Drama Box |
| 2013 | Digital Fashion Week 2013 |
| 2012 | The Book of Living and Dying By The Finger Players Information about this production is available in The Repository. The published play is available for browsing in Book Den. |
| 2012 | Afar By Drama Box |
| 2012 | Freud’s Last Session By Blank Space Theatre |
| 2012 | Turn By Turn We Turn By The Finger Players |
For a complete list of Darren’s work, please check out his website.
By Daniel Teo
Published on 15 Jul 2015
